5 Best Monday Columns

Paul Krugman on Drilling, Disaster, and Denial Departing from his usual economic musings, the New York Times columnist turns a critical eye toward the the environmentalist movement. Krugman asserts that while
the impetus to play environmental caretaker was strong during the
ecological doldrums of the 1960s, improved technology has reduced the
visibility of environmental dangers and in turn its presence in the
American consciousness. "Let's admit it: by and large, the
anti-environmentalists have been winning the argument, at least as far
as public opinion is concerned," writes Krugman. "Then came the gulf
disaster. Suddenly, environmental destruction was photogenic again."

Simon Schama on England's Watershed Moment Writing in The New Yorker, Schama, the world-renowned historian and art critic, offers a plummy gloss of why this week's parliamentary elections could represent a huge
turning point for the U.K. If the Liberal Democrats, England's
historically marginalized third party, get enough seats this week, they
may be able to force a reform of the country's entrenched two-party
system. Schama explains that "the really shocking, really thrilling
thing is that many Britons, faced with this prospect, seem ready to
say, Goodbye. And good riddance."

Jon Kingsdale on Health Care's Road Ahead Kingsdale, executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, gives a clear-eyed take
on the policy and politics of actually implementing Obama's ambitious
health care reform. "The executive branch has 3 1/2 years to work with
50 very different states in bolstering popular support and executing
effectively," Kingsdale notes. "That will require massive amounts of
technical expertise and project management, combined with public
outreach and creative communications." He draws up a six-point plan for
getting it done, but wraps things up with a sobering warning: "The real
campaign has just begun."

Ruth Marcus on 'Spoken From The Heart' Reviewing Laura Bush's memoir, the Washington Post columnist comes away believing
the former First Lady is "good, very good" at transmitting the emotions
of her life before marrying George Bush. "But like the West Texas soil,
Bush has her limits," Marcus sighs, scouring the latter half of the
book for similar emotional insights into Bush's time as First Lady and
finding little. "It is a shame that 'Spoken From the Heart' was, in the
end, overly edited by the head," Marcus concludes. "Because Laura Bush,
with an ear trained by all those hours curled up with novels, clearly
has more to tell, if she so chooses."

James Carroll on the
Military and PowerPoint In an artfully written analysis of the U.S.
military's embrace of groupthink, the Boston Globe columnist traces the problem
to the post-WWI bureaucracy boom in the Pentagon. "The face-to-face
interaction of humans, debating urgent questions and criticizing the
in-flow of intelligence, was replaced by the bite-size thought
structure of electronic communications that inevitably delete
complexity," Carroll recounts before lamenting the endgame of such
mass-generated opinion: "a diffusion of moral responsibility and the
emergence of an impersonal dynamic over which no human authority could
be effectively exercised." Carroll sees the negative effects of the
military's shift in everything from stockpiling nukes to the war in
Iraq to, yes, PowerPoint.